BONN, Germany (Reuters) - One in eight of the world's birds
are at risk of extinction as climate change puts birds under
great pressure, a leading conservation group warned on Monday.

The population of rare birds such as the Floreana
mockingbird of the Galapagos Islands or the spoon-billed
sandpiper, which breeds in northeastern Russia and winters in
south Asia, has declined sharply and they could go extinct, the
International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a
report.

The 2008 "Red List for Birds" report, published on the
first day of a May 19-30 U.N. conference about biodiversity in
the German city of Bonn, said 1,226 species of bird were now
threatened.

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The annual report, closely watched among conservationists,
added eight of the world's 10,000 bird species to the
Critically Endangered category, the greatest level of threat.

"The latest update of the IUCN Red List shows that birds
are under enormous pressure from climate change," said Jane
Smart, head of the IUCN Species Programme. The IUCN groups
governments, conservation groups and scientists.

Long-term drought and sudden extreme weather are putting
additional stress on habitats that threatened species depend
on, said the report, noting that extinction rates were rising
on continents, rather than on islands where, historically, most
extinctions have occurred.

Of the 26 species that moved category due to changes in
their population size, rate of decline or range size, 24 were
moved up to a higher level of threat.

CURLEW, WARBLER

They included the Eurasian curlew and Dartford warbler,
which lives in Europe and north-west Africa. Both were
previously in the "Least Threatened" category.

"We urge governments to take the information contained in
(the report) seriously and do their level best to protect the
world's birds," said Smart. The U.N. Climate Panel says that
burning of fossil fuels is stoking global warming.

The report showed that Brazil and Indonesia had the highest
number of threatened bird species with 141 and 133
respectively.

The group picked out several other species, including the
Mallee emuwren in Australia which has suffered from years of
drought and is seeing its population shrink sharply.

Its habitat has become so fragmented that a single bushfire
could be catastrophic, said the report.

In the Galapagos Islands, the population of the Floreana
mockingbird has fallen to fewer than 60 from an estimated 150
in 1996 and is now on the Critically Endangered list because
the species is vulnerable to extreme weather.

The report also pointed to some species that had fared
better as a result of conservation efforts, including the
Marquesan Imperial-pigeon and the little spotted kiwi.

Around 4,000 delegates at the U.N. meeting of the
Convention on Biodiversity will discuss ways to safeguard the
range of species and try to slow the rate of extinctions among
plants and animals.